As I opened yesterday's paper, I nearly spat out my bleeping cornflakes all over the bleeping place. Bleepety bleep, thought I.

As a police officer with nearly a decade on the front line, barely a week passes in which someone does not refer to me in four-letter terms. I like to think that's not a reflection of my policing style. Now an appeal court judge has ruled that police officers are immune to distress caused by swearing, and has exonerated Denzel Harvey for doing so repeatedly while being searched for drugs.

Prosecutions for s.5 Public Order Act 1986 have long been awkward. An old precedent demands that for an s.5 to occur, a third party must be "harassed, alarmed or distressed". When penalty notices for disorder (PNDs) were introduced for s.5, many were revoked when officers failed to evidence this third party. I remember being briefed by an inspector in no uncertain terms that if someone was found urinating or swearing in public, I should give evidence of the dear little old lady who passed by them in disgust. If our local magistrates noticed that Blandmore had a strangely high population of dear little old ladies, they never mentioned it. An indication, perhaps, that police officers have been over-using and abusing "s.5 POA". But s.5 does not exist to deal with those who include the F-word in their regular dialogue, but for those who cause genuine alarm and fear on Britain's streets: the kind of growling drunkard you would cross the road to avoid.

My colleagues will nod when I describe our regular Friday night customer, who on arrest passes the transit drive to custody uttering a relentless stream of filth. I have variously been told that my husband is a blind lesbian, my kids will die of cancer, that I was bullied at school by a teacher that – bizarrely – I was also shagging, and that I will come home later to find my dog nailed to the front door and the suspect hiding in the bath with a machete ready to rape me (luckily, I have no husband, kids or dog, and I'm moving house tomorrow). When compared with this kind of abuse – that goes unpunished daily in transit vans nationwide – if defendant Harvey was effing and blinding in a nonchalant tone, without particular malice or aggression, shame on the officers who reached for that PND.

The issue is whether or not police officers should expect to be the recipients of such language, without feeling alarm or distress. In my eyes, the crucial question should be not what language was used, but how it was used. If Harvey was squaring up to officers, bellowing down the street and glowering at passers-by, he should have been fined even if the only words out of his mouth were "buttercups" and "puppies". This ruling does not change that, but it should perhaps have been made clear in the judge's statement.

The Police Federation is right to point out that we are heading down a path where a police officer being the victim of crime is a mitigating, rather than an aggravating factor. Judges no longer see the uniform and see a crime against society, but rather the uniform is a provocation and an excuse. August's riots showed just how much respect this country's criminal youth have for law and order.

That said, I don't think we should denounce the case of foul-mouthed Harvey as the tipping point into total chaos. As members of society ourselves, for the most part police officers do grasp the standards of common, decent folk, and do our best to enforce them. A judge can meditate to his heart's content from the comfort of his cosy, wood-panelled court-room. Frankly, I don't give a bleep.